He’d been picturing her staring at him in disbelief, arguing against it. But Sam wouldn’t listen because he had heroism on his side. He was young and, like most young people, he knew that his way was the only fitting way. He intended to rescue her. Although he knew the hardest part of this for her would be to leave the sea.
The logistics had come shooting at him at the same speed as the white lines in the center of the coastal road. “You could come to Iowa with me,” he would say. “We could live with my parents while I go to seminary; I know it would be all right.”
Then his car had broken out of the shore pines and onto the tidelands and the sky suddenly sailed above him. He saw hedges of salal and fragrant wild roses and dunegrass where the earth gave way to the beach. The bright shavings on the water blinded him. He had to squint and fumble for his Ray-Bans before he could make his turn. And he’d driven directly to the McCart’s house, screeched to a halt beside the dented mailbox at the curb. When he’d taken the stairs two at a time and banged on the door loud enough to bring out the neighbor, he’d known that his life had been about to change. Until Mrs. Branton came out to meet him, Sam hadn’t imagined it changing this different way.
Mrs. Branton uses her fingernails to pinch off dead fuchsia blooms that look like hanging lanterns. She sorts systematically through the leaves. “You haven’t been around this place since Kenneth McCart died, have you?” One dead bloom falls to the ground, then another. She says, “This must be hard for you, too.”
Watching her pinch flowers does not chase away the images he still fights in his head. The pageantry of a military funeral, a twenty-one-gun salute, a Color Guard, the flag folded into a tight triangle, handed over into defeated hands. He wonders if the casket came from Masterson-Linn, if it could have been one that Aubrey had tried out for comfort.
“You know what people are saying, don’t you?” Mrs. Branton asks as she lifts the watering can and a stream runs from its spout into the soil. “They’re saying that anyone would do well enough to be rid of that family.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Losing a boy like that, when the father didn’t want him to go in the first place. They’re saying losing Kenneth got to them. They’re saying Walt McCart wasn’t the same again, that the girl got desperate trying to make him see that he had another child besides the son he’d lost. They say she decided she couldn’t ever be good enough for her father so she went the other way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe that’s why the house looks like somebody’s coming back. When Aubrey left, maybe she didn’t know that she wouldn’t be back again. They’re saying McCart had to do something fast because that girl got herself into trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Yes. You know. Trouble. The family way.”
“Not Aubrey. I don’t think so.” But maybe, he reminds himself, he doesn’t really know.
Oh, Father. What do you want me to do now?
Sam pictures the fishing nets and the crab pots at the deserted bait shop swaying overhead. He hears Walt McCart’s voice asking his boy, “Is this what you wanted, Kenneth? This is the self respect you wanted? Well, you got it now. See?”
Sam feels as if he has reached for something flashing past him and has just barely missed it.
The only person he knows to call is Brenda. She is a young woman now, too, and often very wise. When he tells his sister why he had come all this way and what he was thinking, she tells him what he needs to hear.
“That beach town was never your real life, Sam,” she tells him. “That place isn’t about reality; it isn’t what it’s made out to be. Come home, Sam. You’re crazy if you don’t give this up.”
“What about Aubrey?”
“What about her?”
“I’m in love with her.”
“Give yourself more benefit than that, Sam. You’re in love with a time and a place. You’re in love with the dream of Aubrey. She was never a part of who you are here.”
“But knowing Aubrey is here makes me be the person that I am there.”
“Mom and Dad will say the same thing. I’m sorry that you’re hurt, but you have your whole life in front of you.”
“I know.”
“You already know that God has something special for you in mind.”
“Yes,” he says quietly, “but I thought Aubrey was going to be a part of that.”
“I think you ought to come home.”
Late in the evening, before he leaves, Sam walks alone beside the waving dunegrass. He climbs over driftwood. Shells shatter beneath his feet. He shoves his hands inside his pockets, jiggles his coins and the Mustang keys. He stands still and gazes into the distance, his heart a flood tide of regret, as he looks over the dark horizon of the sea.
PART TWO
Present Day
CHAPTER SIX
The ancient Volkswagen van pulled next to the curb, parked, and sat in the dark outside the house on Burn Hill Lane. After a good amount of time passed, almost twenty minutes or so, he opened the rusty van door, wincing at its groan. The hinges could use a good dose of WD-40, Hunter thought. They had definitely seen better days.
“Over there.” He pointed to the dark hulk of a house to their left. “In the garage.”
His partner let out a low whistle.
Hunter felt inside his jeans pocket. Yes, the keys were still there. Yes, he admitted, he felt the slightest tinge of guilt for what he was about to do.
But only the slightest tinge.
His father had promised Hunter for years that he would get his uncle to let him drive this car.
When you’re old enough, his dad had said, then I’ll ask. When you’ve practiced and gotten your license and have enough experience to understand what a real engine feels like.
Anyway, a person wasn’t actually stealing, Hunter reasoned, if he only planned to borrow something for a while.
Ryan Dowell, Hunter’s best friend, led the way across the dark lawn. “I can’t believe a pastor would have an old car like this stashed away somewhere.” He stood on tiptoe and peered through the grimy glass. He stepped away as Hunter inched the garage door up off the ground.
“It’s under a sheet. He keeps it covered.”
Ryan whistled again.
“Sh-h-hhh.”
Hunter’s breath came in shallow bursts, his blood pulsing in his own ears. This low spark of danger pleased him. For the first time in months, Hunter felt alive.
More alive than he had since the day his father checked into the hospital to stay, when Hunter had no words. It had always been a struggle to express his emotions. “Jab,” he’d said instead as he squared off like a boxer and gave his dad a light punch on the elbow.
“Jab back,” and his father had cuffed him, too.
A boxing match was so much easier than talking. So much easier than watching his father, frail and tired in his hospital bed, stare at his mother as if he needed to memorize something he might never see again.
When Hunter opened the garage door, a dark, hollow room, smelling of dust and lawn fertilizer and gasoline, loomed ahead of them. Reaching up, he dared to grab hold of the old light chain and a bare bulb came to life. He whipped the sheet off with the same finesse a magician would use to whip a tablecloth from beneath a load of china. The sheet billowed into the air for a moment before it fell into a pool at his feet.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
Ryan ran his fingers along the red surface. “This is something.”
“A 1965 Mustang Coupe. Everything’s original. Even the seats.”
“He hasn’t redone anything?”
“He bought it used when he was in high school. He’s kept it this way ever since.”
Ryan ran a hand over the black leather headrest. “I’ll bet she really cooks.”
“A 289 V-8.”
“Not a six-cylinder?”
“No. This one’s a hot ride, man.” Hunter pitched Ryan the keys.
“He won’t know anything’s been touched. He checks the tires ever so often. Makes sure the battery’s good. Other than that, he hasn’t taken it out for years.” Hunter’s words were more for himself than his friend.
Ryan steered and Hunter pushed. When the Mustang began to creep into the open night air, its wheels crunched over pebbles. That was the only sound. By the time they were at the end of the driveway, their hair was wet and they were sweating because of the heat. The car jostled into the dip at the curb and Ryan steered it into the road.
Two houses down, Hunter motioned for Ryan to take the passenger side. He climbed in himself and started the motor. They skulked to the end of the block in the dark, the motor pulsing beneath their seats like something alive.
Hunter fumbled with a knob on the dashboard when they reached a cul-de-sac. The high beams came on. The blank façade of a house in front of them, the grassy lawn, the pavement, were all flooded with light. Hunter would have to choose whether to go left or right. He chose left. “You ready? You want to see what she’ll do?”
Ryan nodded and Hunter stomped the gas.
Tires squealed and they started pulling G’s. They careened around the curve, topped out at the corner of Toboggan Drive. Hunter took a wide left onto Toboggan, which led them toward Main Street.
He whipped the wheel to the left when they pulled up behind a pickup truck. They swerved into the oncoming lane. “This baby’s got burners.”
“We goin’ through the center of town?”
Hunter downshifted in answer. In spite of the stifling heat, drops of sweat from his hair chilled his neck.
He would not be able to explain to anyone later why he chose to do it. The thrill of fear, perhaps. Or maybe just lunacy. He loved the way it felt to control the car, to control something. At the yellow traffic light on Main Street, Hunter reached for the knob, cut the headlights, and boomeranged into the intersection as the light turned red. Ryan’s head crashed against the window.
“You’re killing me.”
Hunter downshifted again, accelerated.
Ryan reached behind his shoulder for the seatbelt and didn’t find one.
“It’s on the seat, man. No shoulder harnesses back in the old days.”
Ryan fumbled behind his hip and found the belt. He shoved it into the metal buckle with a fleeting sense of relief. “Cut it out, Hunter. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
Hunter’s lunatic momentum wouldn’t let him stop. Danger, who cared! He felt something. The fear in him proved that he hadn’t died, too. He sped through the four-way stop in the darkness, crouching forward, gripping the wheel as if that would let him hold onto everything that had been stolen from him. Ahead, in the next block, a car began to pull out, its yellow headlights streaming low, crosshatching the pavement. Hunter whipped the wheel to the right and they roared around it.
They crossed a deserted bridge, the guard rail flickering past like frames in a film reel. A yellow Iowa highway sign loomed and was gone; they’d left the streetlamps of town well behind. They crested hills, veered around turns, hit open corn country driving blind.
A midsummer moon suddenly soared above the ridge as Hunter took every curve by instinct. For a moment the bright orb in the sky made Hunter squint. His eyes adjusted to the silvery path of moonlight and he floored the pedal again, ripping through the intersection at Brodick Lane.
He had no idea why a truck would be parked on the shoulder. If he had been flying with his lights, he would have seen the extra banks of reflectors overhead, the trailer’s broad back gate that read “Corn-Fed Beef from the Richness of the Heartland. Atkins Approved!” If he had been flying with lights, he would have been visible as he topped the hill, and the driver would have waved one of the flares he was hurriedly setting.
Three head of Angus cattle, corn-fed and hefty, were roving along the roadbed. The driver, who had stopped to examine a blown tire, had opened the gate to check the stock, never thinking that the angry blast and the flying rubber and the wobbling trailer would incite a stampede. He’d very nearly been trampled as the cows rushed into the road.
When the Mustang shot past in nothing more than a stunning whir, the driver waved his arms to warn them, but it was too dark.
Hunter slowed a bit as he buzzed past the trailer. The smell of manure made him wince. Too late, he saw the massive animal loom in front of him.
Ryan cursed. Hunter plastered his brakes. The tires screeched. A flare lit the night. The whites of the cow’s eyes shone, rolled back into its head with fear.
On impact, everything went blank.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The wedding reception took place on the lawn of a turn-of-the-century house in the Sherman Hill Historic District, three blocks away from the church. Pastor Samuel James Tibbits, who made a point to appear at the party when he had been the one to conduct the ceremony, balanced his plate of Swedish meatballs while he stabbed a small square of exotic cheese with a toothpick. Beyond the wedding cake, red punch flowed from a gleaming silver fountain, making the same noise as a pump on a fish aquarium.
Ah, love, Sam thought as he stood beside candles in iron stands that were impaled into the lawn like tribal weapons. All is white lace now, but these youngsters have a lot ahead of them.
“Hey, Sam. Great ceremony for the kids. Thank you.” Grant Ransom extended a hand across the chafing dish.
Sam shook the man’s hand soundly. Grant had been a confidant, a deacon and a member of Covenant Heights Community Church for many years. Over time the two men had shared worship, prayer, and the sometimes muddy depths of each other’s souls.
Grant clapped him on the back. “It wouldn’t have been the same if you hadn’t done the service. You know how much you mean to all of us, Sam.”
“It means a lot to me, too, Grant. Besides, being a part of weddings is one of my favorite things to do.”
The deacon gave his pastor a knowing look. “Better than the funeral you had to do last week.” The deacon’s voice had suddenly gone somber. “Poor Joe. Such a tragedy.”
“Yes. It was.”
The somberness stretched between them. The yard grew noisy with the clicking of cicadas, so much louder than the wedding guests surrounding them. Sam could still hardly believe he’d lost his good friend and brother-in-law. For one beat, two, he couldn’t breathe in the sweltering heat.
Grant brought them back to the wedding. “Simon’s a good man for Laura, I think. I hope. You know how it is, never easy to give up a daughter.”
Sam speared a meatball. “No, I don’t imagine it would be.”
“All those years of ballet recitals and boys’ pictures torn from magazines and those rubber elastics from her braces everywhere.”
“You’ve always made it sound like so much fun.”
“It was fun. Except for the bongo lessons. The only thing that wasn’t fun was the bongo lessons.”
“Now somebody else gets to worry about all that. Maybe she’ll take up the bongos again—in her own home.”
“I knew you’d do that, Sam. I knew you’d make me see the good side.”
Sam returned the clap on his friend’s back. “Laura’s a beautiful bride. You did a good job, Dad.”
After Grant left, Sam deposited his plate with a fellow who came by with a tray. He chose to remain a few moments longer, surveying the fairy-tale setting from beside a ficus tree, not knowing why he wasn’t able to touch the joy and the hope of his ministry anymore.
Of all places a pastor ought to feel expectant and glad, it ought to be at a wedding.
This morning he had spent an hour poring over financial statements because the re-siding project at Covenant Heights had cost more than the original bid. He had spent an hour in a rousing debate with Lester Kraft about cosmology and the age of the earth. The entire time which he kept thinking, If I could learn all these scientific threads fast enough, I could argue intelligently. But I don’t have time to learn it all! He had spent an hour with Dottie Graham who had rece
ived a telegram that her son had been injured in an Army maneuver and who had been unable to talk to him by phone.
“We’ll trust that the money for the siding will come from somewhere,” he’d said in a phone message to the chairman of his finance committee.
“Give me a week to do research on the carbon-dating of the rocks in Tanzania,” he’d said to Lester, “but in the meantime, I stick by my theological point of view.”
“God may not have caused this accident to happen,” he said to Dottie as she plucked tissues from the box he held in his hand, “but you must remember that all things work for the good of those who love the Lord. You must remember that, although you can’t nurse your son back to health right now, the Father can.”
He knew he was off the mark for thinking it, but he couldn’t stop himself. Father, I know I’m wrong but, ever since Joe died, I feel like I’m covering for you!
The wedding ceremony had been beautiful, but Sam felt weary to the marrow of his bones. He cast his eyes toward the stars as he shrugged off his jacket, tossed it across the front seat of his car, and loosened his tie. His stomach growled as he drove off, but that didn’t concern him much.
He had found certain benefits in being a single pastor. If you counted his one childhood romance with Aubrey McCart, you could say that he’d almost made it to the altar twice. He’d dated during seminary, thinking it important to find a woman who would stand beside him to serve his church. But the women he met there each had their own callings upon their lives. He’d been serious about one woman there, but she’d headed to the missionary field in Indonesia.
Remember Me Page 5
